Super resolution techniques generate higher resolution images to allow original, lower resolution image data to be displayed on higher resolution display systems. Super resolution techniques include multi-frame techniques. Multi-frame super resolution (MFSR) techniques fuse several low resolution (LR) frames. It can deliver rich details and makes the video more stable in the temporal domain. As a byproduct, MFSR can reduce noise to some extent.
However, if the number of low resolution frames is relatively low, such as less than or equal to 5 frames, the noise reduction performance is not good. This results in requiring other means of noise reduction. Typically, two different kinds of noise reduction may be used. One applies noise reduction for all of the input low resolution frames before doing the MFSR process. This increases the frame delay while the future low resolution frames have noise reduction applied to them.
An alternative approach applies noise reduction on the super resolution results of the MFSR process. This method requires more hardware resources because noise reduction operates on higher resolution frames. This also requires more memory and more processing because more data in involved.
The above noise reduction techniques may include motion adaptive or motion compensation processes because those are independent of the MFSR process and do not utilize any information from the super resolution process.